1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present disclosure relates to computer aided design (CAD), and more particularly, to a curved surface meshing method during reverse engineering processes.
2. Description of Related Art
A three-dimensional (3D) scanner captures geometric information of a 3D object by gathering high resolution points representing the shape of the 3D object. Once captured, raw 3D scan data may be converted to a CAD model for further processing to replicate or modify a design of the 3D object in a process referred to as reverse engineering.
Generally speaking, a 3D model of an object may be represented by a plurality of freeform curved surfaces. The curved surfaces may be represented by either a plurality of points or dense triangular (or other shaped) meshes which cumulatively form outlines of the 3D object. At present, an iterative algorithm is widely used for constructing triangular meshes. However, triangles fitted via the iterative algorithm are variform and the fitting speed is very slow. Another popular triangulation method is the Delaunay algorithm, which focuses on improving surface dividing quality. Triangles fitted via the Delaunay algorithm are well-proportioned; however, a huge amount of triangles are produced by this method, which requires a great deal of time.
What is needed, therefore, is a curved surface meshing method, which can construct an appropriate amount of well-proportioned triangle meshes quickly based on user demands, so as to improve the speed and precision of curved surface triangulation.